The following is a transcripted excerpt from an episode The News with Paul DeRienzo on WBAI where EMN Associate Director Matthew Hoh was interviewed to discuss “Russia Knocks Down a US Drone.”

“How is the United States going to handle this issue with Russia? With Iran, with China, with whoever.

It’s very concerning because we have this very recent evidence of how hysterical and unhinged U.S. military decision-making can be.

The last two years of the Afghan War, you had that Russian bounty story, right? That went around for quite a while until it was finally and concretely debunked by the Biden administration. That they have no evidence of Russian bounties for American troops. I mean that went for quite a while that story, at least a year, and it was on the New York Times, it was on MSNBC. It was said with some certainty and there was a demand that the United States do something about it…That the United States act on that.

Now you have this issue where thankfully it was a drone and no one was hurt. Sounds to me like this is not an incompetent pilot who didn’t just have guts and doing that but also knew what he was doing to force the drone down without destroying it possibly. It could have also been a message.

Why are the Americans and some other nations hesitant to give some of our best weapons to the Ukrainians? Well, we don’t want to lose them. We don’t want the Russians to have access to our best stuff… If we lose this, the Russians are going to know how we build our armor.”

Listen to the full episode here.